Love in these Days

by Alec Waugh

  For the third time in the space of seven minutes a young, not unhandsome man had walked past her carriage, and each time, as he had paused in the corridor, he had looked hesitatingly in her direction.

  She had neither recognized nor met his glance. But her trained eye had taken in every detail of his appearance.

  He was extremely well-dressed, suspiciously well-dressed, in fact. A man who spent as much on his clothes as that could not have a great deal of money to spend on other people’s. The years had taught her to suspect that type of man. He was the male equivalent of herself. He was out too definitely to attract. As she lived on men, he lived on women; they were in the same position. That sort of man was unlikely to be of any use to her.

  For the fourth time the young man was coming down the corridor. On this occasion he not only paused opposite her carriage but halted, and, resting his elbow on the brass window-bar, half turned so that he could watch at the same time the countryside and her. He was not only glancing, he was staring at her now: waiting for an opportunity to speak.

  Was she to grant it him, she wondered? In London, certainly, she would not have thought him worth her while. But abroad and on journeys, she had usually allowed herself to profit by men’s interest in her. It was always worth while to have one’s lunch or dinner paid for, or to be given a lift in a taxi to wherever she wished to go. Why not, after all?

  “Anyone for tea, anyone for tea?” An officious, blue-coated waiter was striding peremptorily down the train. “Anyone for tea?”

  Lazily Gwen Lawrence lifted herself out of her corner, collected a couple of illustrated papers, straightened her hat in the narrow mirror above the seat, and walked out into the corridor.

  The eyes of the young man, she knew, were on her; he had turned and was following closely at her heel. It would be easy enough now to give him the opportunity he sought. She had only to sit at a table by herself: and there were a good many empty tables in the restaurant car.

  The train was not crowded, and the majority of the passengers were feeling too ill after their battered crossing to be in any need of food. On the right-hand side of the compartment there were a couple of empty tables.

  A waiter came bowing forward.

  “This way, madam,” he said, and flicked with his napkin at the nearer table.

  Over her shoulder, as she moved sideways towards the chair, she heard, or fancied that she heard, a sudden indrawn sigh of relieved anticipation.

  But even as she moved a sensation of nausea over came her. No, she couldn’t. She was tired of all that, tired to death of it. She couldn’t. At any rate, not to-day.

  Quickly she shook her head.

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll go over there.” And she stepped to the other side of the compartment, where an old lady was sitting by herself.

  There was a frown on the face of the young man as he walked past her—a frown of frustrated vanity.

  The table to which he went was at the extreme end of the compartment, and the seat he chose had its back turned to her. She noted, however, that in the mirror on the carriage wall it was possible for him to watch her movements.

  “It’s not the first time,” she told herself, “that he’s played this game.”

  She was in no mood, however, to interest herself in the technique of gallantry. She was tired—desperately tired of it all. It was a poor game, this business of attracting men. May Julian had been right. A wretched game. But because it was the only game she knew, she had to go on playing it.

  “Tea or chocolate, madam?” a waiter was inquiring.

  Chocolate——oh yes, chocolate. And stretching out her hand, she selected from the collection of glass pots upon the table a small jar of honey.

  Not that she was hungry. Mechanically she divided into two sections the small browned croissant, mechanically she spread on it a thin layer of butter, a thicker layer of honey. Mechanically she sipped at the warm, sweet chocolate. Her elbow rested on the table. She had turned away from the noise and chatter of the car to watch through a window, misted a little now by heat, the monotonous French landscape stream behind her.

  Gustily over the flat coloured fields the wind was blowing, bending the straight trees that flanked the long straight roads. The leaves that had been fresh and green in April were beginning to shrivel and turn brown. A few weeks now, and the golden glory of October would be spilt upon them; a few weeks, and the trees and fields and gardens would put on that mantle of beauty which the parching heat of summer had robbed them of: a few more weeks, and the golden glory would be at an end.

  Bare and leafless in the rain and frost and wind the long tall trees would shiver. Only a little while and their transitory splendour would have gone; would have gone taking with it, as likely as not, this ache that so oppressed her.

  She would live through it, as she had lived through so much else. There was nothing time could not cure, or nothing, rather, time could not kill. It could kill beauty, it could kill love, it could destroy the fresh innocence of spring, the rich glory of July, the opulent autumn splendour. Time, that could destroy all things, could kill, surely, in the end, her grief.

  For a while this love of hers for Graham was going to hurt horribly. But it would end. To suffering as to all else there was a limit set.

  But it was not only the misting of the window glass with the room’s heat that dimmed for her the sharp outlines of the countryside, through which the train leapt and bounded on its way to Paris.

  • • • • • • • •

  The aerodrome at Le Bourget is normally one of the least disturbed places in an untranquil universe, and for such commotion as was afoot there, Graham Moreton was personally and solely culpable.

  That he should be creating such a disturbance was not under the circumstances surprising. It was ten minutes to four, and there were no immediate signs of willingness on the part of the other passengers to follow their luggage into the large motor-chara-banc that was waiting for them in the square.

  It would have been equally surprising had there been any such display. The machine had left Croydon twenty-five minutes late, and had been flying the whole time into a particularly strong wind. The journey had taken over three hours, and had been a particularly exacting one. There was no one who was not grateful on his arrival for a few quiet moments with a brandy-and-soda or a cup of coffee.

  No one, with the exception of Graham.

  From the moment the machine had risen from the ground he had endured agonies of anxiety and suspense, It had been rougher than he had expected. Sometimes the machine had rocked from side to side; sometimes it had dropped alarmingly in air pockets. He had been terrified lest they should be forced to land at Lympne. He had realized also that they were not travelling at anything like the usual speed. Stage by stage he had followed the journey on the map. They had been fifty minutes in the air, and were still not out of England.

  With strained and harassed eyes he had peered through the mist of cloud for the lighthouse of Dungeness, that appears always, by some delusion of the eye as you fly towards it, to be stationed at the summit of an immense cliff of sand. Would it never come, that ultimate projection of the shore?

  And then there had been a nerve-testing half-hour when the machine had risen above the clouds and he was unable to tell what progress was being made. At any other time he would have delighted in that magnificent expanse of billowed snow, white and soft and clean, with the rich sun tinting it and the blue sky spread over it like a tent. But Graham had no eyes for any beauty at that moment.

  Of one thing only could he think: that he should reach Paris in time to warn Gwen Lawrence of her danger; and as long as this white carpet was stretched beneath them, he could not tell how near or how far they were.

  Occasionally through a rift of cloud he could catch a glimpse of the earth below him, a glimpse, however, that could tell him little. Once he fancied that he could detect a town. Abbeville or Amiens, he wondered? As far as time went, they should
have reached Amiens by now. But you could not tell with this wind against you. They seemed to be going fast enough. In the same way that in a motor-car one seemed always to be going faster in the dark. You could not tell. There was no way of telling until this carpet of cloud parted.

  He had not known during the whole journey one happy instant. And now, when they were safely landed, now when they were within thirty minutes of the Gare du Nord, it was maddening that there should be this purposeless delay.

  “When are we going to start?” he asked the customs officer.

  “In a moment,” he was told. “It has been a rough passage. It is not good to hurry them.”

  “But I am in a hurry.”

  The officer shrugged his shoulders.

  “There are few things,” he said, “that do not improve with waiting.”

  “Trains won’t wait.”

  “A train, ah, a train; that is a different matter. I will see what can be done.” And, walking across from group to group, he explained that one of the party was in a particular hurry to catch a train, and would they be so very kind . . .

  The most reluctant of all to leave was the sententious and elderly person who had received Graham so ill-humouredly at Croydon. It had been an unhappy trip for him. Matters had not been improved by Graham’s remark that, ill though he might be in the air, he would have been a great deal more so had he been on sea.

  “Don’t talk to me about a fire!” he had snapped, “when I’m in a frying-pan.”

  “What! That young man again?” he almost shouted when the customs officer had whispered the request. “That young man has been for the last four hours the most infernal nuisance that I have encountered in my life. He worried us at Croydon. He worried us in the air. He’s worrying us now. Shall we never be rid of him!”

  “The sooner we start, the sooner——”

  “I dare say,” he interrupted testily, “but I’m feeling very tired, and my coffee’s very hot, and I’m not going to hurry it.”

  It was four o’clock before the car began its rattling journey over the uneven cobbled road.

  • • • • • • • •

  “How marvellous to be in Paris again!” murmured a woman at Graham’s side. “I feel ten years younger when I see the boulevards.”

  But for the first time in Graham’s life Paris was meaning nothing to him. The boulevards, the restaurants, the cafés, were just places to be hurried past on his way to Gwen. He was scarcely conscious of the strong pervading, curiously personal smell of Paris that is to be found in no other city of the world. His eyes were fixed upon the minute hand of his watch.

  Five-past. Ten-past. There was an infuriating delay of two minutes at the toll-gate. Quarter-past. Twenty-past.

  And in ten minutes Gwen’s train would be steaming into the Gare du Nord. Only ten minutes. There would never be time.

  By a rapid process of mental arithmetic and geography he decided that by stopping the car here and taking a taxi straight he could save at least three minutes. He would be traversing three sides of a quadrilateral by going first to the Avenue de I’Opéra.

  Leaning forward in his seat he shouted over three intermediary rows.

  “Hi, could you stop the car here, please?”

  The elderly and sententious gentleman turned fiercely on him.

  “What, you again, sir!”

  “For the last time, though,” and, jumping quickly into the street, he was running before the last syllable was uttered in the direction of a friendly taxi.

  “Gare du Nord,” he gasped.

  And as the minute hand of his watch touched the number five, with such precarious speed as the cabs of London know not, the draughty and shaking box hooted and rattled its way eastwards. In under four minutes and with the narrowest avoidance of three collisions, the network of intervening streets had been unravelled.

  The platform was turgid with noise and bustle. Porters were shrieking: representatives of tourist agencies were attempting to gather their flocks round them: middle-aged women were gesticulating fiercely above the relics of their belongings.

  Calm and aloof, amid the turmoil, Gwen Lawrence was leaning against the short-handled squat umbrella while two porters were disputing the disposition of her luggage.

  She was wearing the same claret-coloured coat in which so many weeks back she had come to lunch with him. And the same hat had been pulled low upon her forehead.

  But there was no longer that sense of approaching summer in her face. Her head was dropping slightly; her mouth was limp and her eyes were lustreless. For all, though, that she was tired and dishevelled, the fatal garment of her beauty was still about her.

  He touched her on the arm.

  “Gwen,” he said.

  There was surprise foremost in the expression of her face: surprise and welcome: a welcome that was curiously changed to fear.

  “Graham,” she said. “You here!” And the words came slowly as in a gasp.

  “To see you,” he answered.

  “Me? But I never told you——”

  “I know; I rang up this morning. They told me you’d gone away. I followed you.”

  “Followed me, how?”

  “By air, it was the only way.”

  There were fear now and astonishment in the golden, amber-coloured eyes.

  “The luggage, madam?” the successful porter was insisting.

  “Oh, yes, the luggage.”

  Wearily, confusedly, as though the pressure of the situation had grown too tense for her, Gwen Lawrence drew the back of her hand across her forehead.

  “My luggage,” she repeated. “Oh, yes, of course. Take it to the Hôtel Splendor. I’ll come on afterwards.”

  Wearily, confusedly, she allowed for a moment the long-lashed eyelids to droop upon her eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “You learnt I’d gone. You followed me. By air. You had to see me. Why, though, Graham, why?”

  Through a mist she waited for the words she knew must come; the words that she had so dreaded, that she had so longed to hear; the stammered avowal of his love of her; the love that had driven him across Europe after her.

  “Why,” she repeated, “why?”

  “Those shares,” he answered.

  “Shares?” she lingered over the word, a stupid, dazed expression on her face. “Shares, what shares? I don’t understand; what do you mean?”

  “The Florida Asiatics.”

  “But what about them?”

  “They’ve gone down, I was afraid you might not have seen.”

  “I hadn’t, but even so, what does it matter? We’ve sold them days ago.”

  “But the other ones you had.”

  “What others?”

  “The ones you told me of. The ones that another broker bought.”

  “Oh, those,” and she laughed, a nervous little high-pitched laugh, and nervously at her throat the slim gloved fingers fluttered. “I had only a couple of them, as a side bet with a friend. They can go down to a halfpenny for all I care.”

  “Only a couple? Then——” He paused, not knowing what to do or what to say. He felt weak beyond words, weak in the reaction of the last six hours; weak and a little foolish also.

  How ridiculous must this wild rush of his across the Channel seem to her. So much fuss, about a couple of shares and a loss at the most of eighty pounds.

  “If that was all, then——” he began, but she interrupted him.

  “I don’t quite understand,” she said. “Won’t you take me and give me a chocolate somewhere, and we can talk?”

  In silence they walked together out of the huge, sooted, black-domed station.

  “There’s not too bad a place,” she told him, “about half-way down that second street.”

  He nodded his head, and still in silence they walked towards it.

  Chapter XXII

  In Paris and Alone

  It was fairly empty inside the cafè. The hour of the apéritif had not yet come, and tea
was not a meal to be taken frequently in so remote a quarter. For Gwen he ordered a chocolate. For himself a coffee.

  “And a plate of petits fours,” he added.

  Side by side they sat on a red plush, ill-sprung seat; side by side in silence.

  The street outside was empty for the most part of trams and taxicabs. The wind that had blown so strongly all the day had dropped a little. And over the painted houses and faded shop-fronts waveringly a shaft of sunlight flickered. Upon the stress of the afternoon a spirit of tranquillity had descended.

  Gwen Lawrence leant forward across the table, her chin rested on the latticed bridge of her long, white fingers.

  “Well, Graham?” she said.

  Her face, which was shadowed by the low drawn brim of her felt hat, was turned away from him. So still was she that she appeared to be scarcely listening as he answered her.

  “It was like this,” he said; and he told her of how Humphrey had rung him up that morning to tell him of the collapse of Florida Asiatics; told her of the panic that had seized him lest she might still be holding the shares through ignorance of their fate.

  “I didn’t know, you see, what arrangement you had made with your broker,” he explained. “I didn’t know how many shares or how few you held. I remember your saying, ‘Practically all I’ve got,’ and I didn’t know if you had meant that as a joke. So, of course, I had to ring you up.”

  He told her of his conversation with the char.

  “I felt certain,” he said, “that you would be going either to Brussels or to Paris. I knew that I couldn’t get to Brussels in time to stop you, but that I could to Paris. I couldn’t be certain of finding you. But it was all that I could do. And I had to try it.”

  He told her of his rush to Croydon, of his arguments with the passengers, of the ruse by which he had eventually secured himself a seat. He described the anxieties of the trip, the delay at the aerodrome, the audacities of the Parisian taxicab.

  “I got there,” he finished, “at twenty-nine past four. A minute before your train arrived. And I suppose,” he added, with a rather awkward laugh, “that I must look pretty ridiculous chasing after you like this, when nothing was actually at stake at all.”